June 21, 2017

But it's below the fold so you don't have to be triggered, distracted or appalled if you don't want to be.

*********FOLD BLOG HERE*********

There is much happy dancing amongst my fellow righties and wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst the lefties over the fact that Handel won...er... Handely in the Georgia special election. This seems ill-informed. The only real cause for those emotions is that the Democrats flushed ungodly amounts of money into the economy of a red county in a Ahabian attempt to get a win for a candidate who, while quite bright and articulate was singularly ill suited to the district he was running to represent. His Obama-esque cadence, Ted-Talk mannerisms, and general eloquence may yet serve him well in future campaigns...elsewhere. However, those qualities inevitably came off as quite sanctimonious and off-putting in a district that had demonstrated that it had had its fill of blue county sneering back in November. Add to that that the guy was not even a resident of a district in a part of the country where the term carpetbagger has a not entirely flattering historical connotation and the fact that every Hollywood crybully asshole who rails against the very existence of the sort of people who lived in the district endorsed him and one has to wonder what the HELL Handel did to have it even that close. The sheer volume of money poured into the district by the Coalition of Cancerous Contempt was certainly a factor, but this should be a warning.

I completely agree with this post. The acquittal of Minnesota police officer Jeronimo Yanez on charges of manslaughter appears to genuinely be a travesty. The victim had done nothing wrong and by all appearances was killed because he was carrying a concealed weapon and was black. There has been a LOT of BS stories about the police and riots when police officers failed to get undeserved convictions, but people should not let that blind them to incidents like this. The dashcam footage is horrific. This is really a miscarraige of justice. Backing the blue does not mean turning a blind eye to this sort of thing. There is more on this here.

...and while I was there following up on that disturbing not-guilty verdict, I blundered into information concerning a conviction has caused us at least as much concern.

At first blush its easy to agree with the judgement against this contemptible, termagant harpy. However, unless one is a therapist or something, telling someone to go kill themselves does not seem to actually be assault and certainly not manslaughter.

I understand how that might sound a tad heartless, but it all goes back to the bits of wisdom most of our mothers attempted to impart to us as children. If all your friends were jumping off a bridge would you jump too? Well, if your friends were telling you to jump, would you? If so, that’s on you.

This sets a terrible and censorious precedent. You can be damned sure that this sort of thing will be used to JAIL people whose friends, fans, or followers go off the rails. We've already seen how loose "off the rails" can be defined since in Berkley people who defended themselves against rioters are being prosecuted.

This is terrifying.

Moreso is the comments section at the HotAir link above where people ostensibly on our side are taking Jazz to task for suggesting that this is not a good decision. They appear to have bought into the crybully snowflake argument that mere words and pixels in the absence of true threats or physical action constitute assault. This is the Orwellian root of the Twitter Trust and Safety Council and all the other attempts to silence speech they find inconvenient. We've seen far too many times how fungible the word "injury" is in these matters. Free speech is not about people we agree with or like. This horrid 'Heather' is a waste of skin that could be best used by burn victims, but she was nowhere near the guy when he did what she asked...TO HIMSELF. She did something mean and sadistic, but she did so with words. That this fellow offed himself is heartbreaking and a tragedy, but it was his decision and to deny that is to deny him agency and reject the notion of individuality and responsibility at the heart of a free society.

That this decision sets a precedent that will, in all likeliehood have a deliterious effect on political expression would be worrisome enough...

...were it not for the absolute certainty that those of or violence against their political opponents (us) would not be prosecuted.

And that is a big part of the problem , those who are connected to the Axis of Techweasels in Silicon Valley and our self appointed aristocracy in general need not fear such problematic legal ramifications unless they somehow make themselves an embarassment to their patrons.

And with that last sentence this deeply worrisome series of stories brings us to the somewhat less worrisome tale of a sad, lonely fellow on the other side of the political fence, who in an otherwise admirable demonstration of multitasking sent out a screen cap of a vile anti-semitic tweet he received without first policing his tabs.

Indeed, if he did get the anti -semitic tweet he claims, then that is not OK. However, his veracity is somewhat in doubt given that his cover story was that he and his children were showing his wife tentacle porn...to prove it existed.

Anyway: this video adroitly explains Mr. Eichenwald's sad plight and while he certainly cannot be an example to us...he can be a horrible horrible warning.

NSFW

A few takeaways...

First: In the event one finds oneself in this sort of pickle, use a cover story that doesn't invite social services to take away your kids. The truth might be a viable option here.

1
In the case of the woman who told the man she was supposedly friends with to kill himself, I think I side with judge based on one thing: When the fumes in the car started getting really bad, he got out, and she urged him to get back in.
She was under no obligation to try to talk him out of committing suicide. However, when he appeared to abandoned his suicide attempt, telling him to go back and finish the job crossed the line, in my opinion.
I've tried to talk people out of suicide before. One was a close friend, one a casual acquaintance, and one was a a fellow airman in my barracks whom I disliked. I put more effort in some of those conversations than others, but I never considered urging any of them to go through with it.

Posted by: Siergen at Wed Jun 21 14:51:12 2017 (7W7BZ)

2
I was thinking the same thing as Siergen, but also something from a different angle. While in other situations (clearly there were other issues in this particular case, as Siergen mentioned) you don't often see a 1:1 relationship between the verbal or emotional abuser and the victim, such an environment can indeed lead to suicide. I've been intimately involved with a couple of near-suicides that were both prompted by such communications, both in person and via phone and online messaging. In neither case would I be entirely comfortable claiming the perpetrators where directly responsible for manslaughter...yet neither can I in good conscience claim their actions were not directly responsible either.